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  Although the proposed marriage of Achilles and Polyxena is an attempt to make peace, the Greeks see it as a betrayal on the part of Achilles and a trap laid by the Trojans to take down their most powerful warrior. On being struck by Paris, Achilles blames Polyxena for his misery and even as a ghost demands that the Greeks punish her for betraying him.

  Paris is imagined mostly as a coward and weakling who is favoured by Aphrodite and Apollo. Once he is almost killed by Menelaus in a duel, but Apollo saves him.

  Teucer

  Ajax, the greater, son of Telamon, was sent to retrieve the body of Achilles from the Trojans. Ajax was a powerful defensive warrior, skilled in the use of shield and spear. During his duel with Hector both warriors impressed each other so much that they exchanged gifts after the fight ended.

  Most of the time, Ajax defended the Greek ships and in this he was helped by his half-brother Teucer the archer, son of Telamon’s Trojan concubine, Hesione. While Ajax protected Teucer with his shield, Teucer shot arrows that kept the Trojans at bay.

  Odysseus joined Ajax on the mission to retrieve Achilles’ body, fighting off the Trojans while Ajax carried the corpse on his massive shoulders. When they returned to the Greek camp both claimed Achilles’ divine armour, forged by Hephaestus. Agamemnon gave the prized armour to Odysseus who argued his case with clever words that simple Ajax could not counter.

  Feeling cheated, Ajax got drunk and spent the night attacking and killing the sheep penned in the Greek camp, thinking he was slaughtering the Greeks who had insulted him. In the morning, when his senses returned, he saw the dead sheep and heard the soldiers’ laughter, and realized what he had done. Embarrassed, he fell upon his own sword and killed himself.

  Despite opposition from Agamemnon and Menelaus, who were angry that Ajax had killed their sheep, Teucer demanded that he be given a decent burial. However, the Greeks ignored him for he was half-Trojan, the son of Hesione, Priam’s sister.

  After burying his brother, Teucer refused to fight and returned to Greece; but his father denied him entry inside their home in Salamis. ‘My son, born of a Greek wife, is dead. I have no use for my son born of a Trojan concubine,’ Telamon said, slamming the gates on Teucer’s face.

  There are no tales of fighting for a fallen body, or over a fallen warrior’s weapons and armour, in the wars described in the Ramayana and the Mahabharata.

  There are two warriors named Ajax in the Trojan War: ‘greater’ Ajax and ‘lesser’ Ajax. Greater Ajax is the son of Telamon, grandson of Aeacus, who built part of the Trojan wall. Lesser Ajax, son of Oileus, king of Locris, is said to have raped the Trojan princess Cassandra in the temple of Athena, thus incurring the wrath of the goddess, who created storms preventing the Greek ships from returning home.

  Teucer, son of Hesione and Telamon, is famous for his archery and the only reason his arrows don’t strike Hector is because Apollo protects him.

  Oenone

  Tired of war, the Greeks consulted their oracle Calchas who saw a vision that revealed to him that winning Troy would be impossible without the weapons of Heracles. These could only be wielded by Philoctetes, who had inherited them, and who had been abandoned on the island of Lemnos before the war began by the Greeks who could not bear the stench of his rotting injured leg.

  Odysseus and Diomedes were dispatched to fetch the injured warrior. ‘Let’s just bring back his weapons, not him,’ said Odysseus, disgusted by the sight and smell of Philoctetes’ leg. The upright Diomedes disagreed and insisted the warrior be taken to Troy along with his weapons.

  As soon as they landed, Philoctetes raised Heracles’s bow and shot an arrow at the walls of Troy. It struck a warrior standing on the walls. Paris!

  The arrow hurt Paris but did not kill him. He realized he could survive if he was given the right medication. That is when he thought of his first wife, Oenone, the mountain nymph, whom he had forgotten after meeting Helen.

  Paris begged Oenone to use her knowledge of herbs to save his life, but she refused; she had never forgiven his betrayal. ‘Do you remember we had a son whom we named Corythus?’ she asked. ‘It was he who showed the Greek ships the shortest sea route to Troy. He looked just like you and when you saw Helen gazing at him with eyes of desire, you killed him yourself. Paris, you abandoned your wife for Helen. You killed your own son for her. You do not deserve to live.’

  Paris died in Oenone’s arms. Soon after, Oenone took her own life, for she could not bear the thought of living without Paris.

  While Hindu epics speak of kings with many wives as well as many concubines, Greek epics tend to speak of one wife and many concubines. So while Arjuna has many wives besides Draupadi, Paris abandons Oenone to make room for Helen.

  When Philoctetes is finally taken to Troy, ten years later, his wound is finally healed by the sons of Asclepius: the surgeon Machaon and the physician Podalirius.

  In some versions, Oenone burns herself on Paris’s funeral pyre, suggesting that roots of the practice of widow-burning or sati that was glamorized in many Hindu tales may have been found in Indo-European tribes.

  The story of Oenone and Paris comes from Posthomerica.

  Oenone was a nymph on Mount Ida and a priestess of the Mother Goddess Cybele.

  Helenus

  Following the death of Paris, two sons of Priam, Helenus and Deiphobus, fought to claim Helen. When Priam gave her to Deiphobus, an angry Helenus left the city and went over to the Greek side. He revealed that he was an oracle and he knew what needed to be done for the Greeks to breach Troy. They would have to fetch the bones of Agamemnon’s grandfather, Pelops; secure the services of Pyrrhus, the son of Achilles sired on a woman on the island of Scyros when Achilles was hiding in the women’s quarters disguised as a girl; and steal the Palladium, a sacred image of Athena, located within Troy.

  The first two tasks were easy. For the third, Odysseus and Diomedes slipped into the city disguised as beggars and stole the image of Athena under the cover of darkness. As they were escaping, they were spotted by Helen but she did not raise an alarm. Instead she said, ‘Tell my husband that I stay true to the Greeks and pray for his success. That I do not betray you to the Trojans is proof of where my loyalties lie.’

  A palladium is similar to the ‘grama-devata’ or village deity of Hindu mythology that holds the power of the kingdom, and hence must be guarded by the king. Conquest of other kingdoms meant seizing these devatas and bringing these images to the capital city temple.

  The original Trojan Palladium was an image of Pallas created by Athena. Pallas was Athena’s childhood friend whom she accidentally killed during a friendly duel. To keep her alive in memory, she created the statue and also took on the name Pallas Athena. The image was given by Zeus to the Trojan kings for safekeeping. After Odysseus and Diomedes stole it, it eventually made its way into the hands of Aeneas, the Trojan, who took it to Italy where it was enshrined in Rome in the temple of Vesta.

  Oracles play a key role in the Trojan War. Calchas is a Greek and Helenus is a Trojan. In medieval times, Calchas was believed to be a Trojan who had defected to the side of the Greeks.

  In some tales, Pelops was driven out of Lydia by Ilus of Troy and so the return of his bones (or specifically the shoulder bone of ivory) marked his symbolic return home. Many of the Greeks who fought at Troy were descendants of Pelops.

  Odysseus and Diomedes contrast each other. Odysseus is cunning and manipulative, while Diomedes displays patience, maturity and nobility.

  In the Little Iliad of the Epic Cycle, Odysseus tries to stab Diomedes in the back so that he can take the credit for stealing the Palladium, but Diomedes catches him in time. Instead of killing Odysseus, Diomedes simply binds his hands and makes him walk ahead, hitting him with the flat of his sword, humiliating him. He does not kill the Ithacan as he knows Odysseus’s cunning is needed if the Trojan War has to be won. The phrase ‘Diomedian necessity’—for a job that needs to be done under compulsion—comes from here.

  Trojan Horse